Not so easy business

India’s jump in Ease of Business ranking is welcome. But there is much that it does not capture

The improvement in India’s “Doing Business” rankings was quite a surprise, and among the few pleasant ones in recent weeks. What did the government do right? If business has become so much easier, why don’t we see a boom in new businesses and investment? Such questions are critical to help evolve a more focussed set of policy priorities for India.

The jump in the ranking, from 100 to 77, is correlated with an improvement in the ratings, a jump of 6.6 per cent over last year. This is the second year that India has seen a massive jump in the same ratings with its ranking going up by 23 places this year, on top of 30 places last year. In two years, therefore, India’s position has improved from 130 to 77. Of the 10 categories that together make up the aggregate index, eight saw some improvement over the last year, and two were the same. What was even more interesting was that construction permits and cross-border trade were two aspects that showed maximum improvement; index value for the two improved by 34 and 19 per cent respectively.

Notably, the ease of doing business survey does indicate that little has changed over the last year in some areas where India historically performs poorly — enforcement of contracts, paying taxes, and registering property stand out, in my mind. Each of these are multi-sectoral issues where improvements would require coordinated efforts across multiple layers of the government and, therefore, legal and procedural changes would be more complex. And while the slow speed of change is understandable, it is also true that these are important aspects where much action is required.

Do such rankings reflect the reality of business in India? The answer, in my understanding, is a partial yes. There has been, no doubt, a significant improvement in the paperwork associated with business in many areas of the government. Permissions and form submissions of various types have become much easier for those who keep good records. This is true both at the states and the Centre, and the improvement is therefore understandable.

However, the jump in the ratings is not aligned with the experiences of people conversant with the business climate. Construction, as a business, is typically not very easy to do and requires a multitude of submissions, permissions and even side payments. While some improvement has occurred across the country, the jumps appear to be non-commensurate with these improvements. It is possible that India is “gaming” the ratings. This is relatively simple to do and would require finding those elements within the ratings that are the easiest to change and focusing on those items, rather than taking on the more difficult ones.

Arguably, there is nothing wrong in this as long as it leads to a real improvement in business conditions and not just a numerical one. But on the other hand, gaming the ratings implies that an international agency is effectively setting the priorities of the government.

This is, of course, not to say that things are all made-up. Significant improvements are happening, and many of those are through improved use of information technology. We will find this across many government departments both at the central and state level. And they are steadily improving the ease of business in recent years. Such improvements have an instant impact in terms of costs of transactions. However, their impact on economic growth rates tends to be felt over a longer time period — and can sometimes take many years to be reflected in any measurable macro-economic outcomes. We must, however, recognise that dependence on IT has also perversely made things more difficult for those entrepreneurs who are less digitally able. This will no doubt change with time and familiarity, but it would require the government to constantly keep on working at making its IT-enabled interfaces more user-friendly for the small and micro-business entrepreneur.

What does this say of Make in India? Process changes such as those captured in the survey will impact in the long term, the short-term effect on investments and new business and employment growth will be limited. Those are more driven by macroeconomic conditions, labour climate, demand conditions, infrastructure issues etc.

But we must recognise that there is much that this ranking does not capture.

First, they do not capture the out-of-the process issues related to the daily running of a business, the various investigations conducted by the revenue department, or company law matters, or labour-related issues, or, for that matter, the various demands of the inspectors of quality and processes. Changes that can do away with such inspector raj require more than simply a technology infusion. They require a rethinking of the many rules and regulations governing this sector and the over-dependence on an ill-motivated bureaucracy and technocracy. India has been reluctant to address these issues for many decades because it involves the dirty job of clearing through the messy lobbying of many groups, both within and outside the government.

Second, the reality of business in India requires the entrepreneur to focus on a whole range of aspects not covered adequately in such ratings. For instance, businesses have a problem of employability, poor skills, corruption, and controls on internal trade, avenues for accessing capital for small and micro-businesses being some examples. Some of these issues are very India-specific and global comparability ratings will rarely capture them in the depth required.

Third, input costs, demand factors and infrastructure issues are another class of factors that ease of doing business does not intend to capture. While that enables it to retain its focus, these are important factors that impact both global and domestic investment.

To sum up, the ease of doing business ratings’ improvements are very welcome and are an affirmation of the changes occurring within both the state and central governments. The objective of improving India’s economic climate, however, requires the government to take on far tougher tasks, some of which are included in the ratings, but many are not. Finally, while we can and should celebrate the improvement, the focus and prioritisation need to remain on issues relevant for India, which may or may not be, captured in the ratings.

The writer is an economist and heads Indicus Foundation

Source: Indian Express, 12/11/2018

There’s a near total exclusion of women from decision-making on mitigating climate change

Maybe this is too much to hope for, but what a mighty leap it would be for India both economically and socially to invest in capacity and skill building for women to combat climate change

It is that time of the year when one routinely encounters people hacking and coughing in the metros, thanks to the toxic pea soup that is the atmosphere. With this come expert opinions on why this is so and how the air can be cleared. By and large, the consensus is that the poisonous air is part of climate change in progress, whether man-made or natural.

It is also the time of the year when many people are forced to stay away from work thanks to the debilitating effects of pollution or other climate-related issues. And here is where the gender factor comes into play, especially in a low income country like India. Women face a much higher risk of the ill-effects of climate change. For a start, a majority start life with nutritional deficiencies as a result of prejudices against the girl child. Climate affects health through a multiplicity of ways from extreme heat or cold, poor air quality, poor water quality and lack of food security.

All these factors are common to both genders but where women are at a disadvantage is in their lack of or limited access to healthcare. Despite commendable strides in making healthcare accessible to all, facilities in rural areas, even in many urban ones , are not geared to cater to climate-related health problems. Women do not go to clinics or hospitals due to lack of transportation, fears related to their safety, and the simple fact that their health is a low priority for the family. . Unlike educated and empowered women, rural or uneducated women who suffer pollution-related illnesses don’t even realise this. There is little public communication and awareness of this. They believe their illness is just tiredness or a fever which will pass.

Cooking indoors using wood or coal is another reason why women suffer from pollution-related ailments. In rural areas, women spend much longer inside their homes cooking with fuels which give off carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and particulate matter all of which are detrimental to their health. Many of these pollutants affect not just the women but their unborn children as well.

Poverty plays a major role in the health of women who are forced to migrate from rural to urban areas. The homeless in cities are often forced to make do with inadequate housing or none at all leaving them vulnerable to polluted air and toxins from poor cooking or heating infrastructure.

The big problem in countries such as India is the near total exclusion of women from the decision-making process on mitigating climate change. Women are powerful vehicles of social change in many areas. Rather than a faceless bureaucrat or expert in a distant place speaking about the benefits of decreasing the impact of climate change, women who are at the greatest risk should. They should be among the key stakeholders in marrying traditional knowledge with scientific and technological inputs.

Now that it is election season and pollution and other climate change aspects are talking points, all parties have a chance to take this up as a serious development issue. Maybe this is too much to hope for, but what a mighty leap it would be for India both economically and socially to invest in capacity and skill-building for women to combat climate change. The first thing to be done should be institute mechanisms to gather data on area-specific environmental problems. Many of us think a pastoral life is conducive to clean living. It is not. The threats are different but they are there.

It is not as simple as distributing smokeless chullas which many NGOs believe to be a panacea. The answer has to come with local inputs and local knowledge. The number of work days lost and the health costs of pollution in Delhi alone, if computed, should give an idea of how short-sighted it is to let things slide once the visible signs of danger are over. The problems are clear and present all year around to millions who do not have air purifiers, masks, clean water or fuel. When it comes to cleaning up the air (and the environment), women can lead the way. They just need to be given a chance to do so.

lalita.panicker@hindustantimes.com

Source: Hindustan Times, 11/11/2018

For Success and Peace

All actions that are undertaken can have four parts, not necessarily in sequence. These are: focus on the action at hand; discrimination between right and wrong to help us act appropriately; devotion to objectives of the action; and insulation from results of the action, not allowing it to affect the doer. The four parts form a wonderful combination of mind and body to the one performing the action. To focus means not allowing diversions and distractions to interfere in the action. This means application of Raja Yoga, that helps hone a meditative focus on the job on hand. To discriminate between right and wrong and take the right path is application of one’s knowledge, which is the practical side of Jnana Yoga. To be devoted, as it were, to the objectives at hand is Bhakti Yoga. Not to allow results of the action to affect the doer is Karma Yoga. To disallow positive outcomes getting into one’s head, one has to give credit to others involved in the action and God. If the result happens to be negative, the other three parts help the doer to take course corrections to achieve the objectives. If this doesn’t work, at least the doer will be happy with the efforts and not lose morale. The four-parts approach helps us to handle success with humility; failure with creative course corrections. With practice, the approach improves one’s chances at success in one’s endeavours, and it provides peace of mind, and amplifies one’s scope for further prosperity

Source: Economic Times, 12/11/2018

Indian Journal of Gender Studies

Table of Contents

Volume 25 Issue 3, October 2018

Previous Issue

Table of Contents (PDF)

Focus on North East India

Gendered Devotion in Neo-Vaishnavism: Women, Monks andSattras of Majuli, Assam Simashree Bora First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 331–350 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Rani Gaidinliu: The Iconic Woman of Northeast India Ajailiu Niumai First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 351–367 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Gendering Democracy: Recasting the ‘Multitude’ Sukalpa Bhattacharjee First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 368–383 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Articles

Double Jeopardy: Plight of Female Students with Disabilities in Botswana’s Higher Education Emmanuel Moswela, Sourav Mukhopadhyay First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 384–409 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Emotional Experiences During Childhood of Iranian Women with Compulsive Sexual Behaviour: A Qualitative Study Mozhgsan Moshtagh, Jila Mirlashari, Hassan Rafiey First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 410–432 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Research Note

Making Women ‘Saksham’ in Jammu District Renu Yadav, Veenu Mehra First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 433–438 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Personal Narrative

Archiving the IAWS Journey: From Six Steel Cupboards to Oral Narratives—Organising, Digitising, Documenting Sumi Krishna First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 439–451 Abstract |  |  |

Book Reviews

Book Review: Aparna Bandyopadhyay, Desire and Defiance: A Study of Bengali Women in Love, 1850–1930 Geetika Bapna First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 452–455 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book Review: Parveen Talha, A Word Thrice Uttered: Stories on Life’s Realities Amitabha Pande First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 455–457 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book Review: Meeta Deka, Women’s Agency and Social Change: Assam and Beyond Soibam Haripriya First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 457–458 Abstract Preview |  |  |

New Resources

New Resources Madhu Shree, Akhlaq Ahmed First Published August 13, 2018; pp. 459–464 Abstract |  |  |

In Economics, what is internal labour market?

his refers to the administrative system within a company which determines the internal allocation and pricing of labour. In the internal labour market, the competition for vacant roles within the company is limited to the pool of labour that is already part of the company. People from outside the company are not allowed to compete for vacant positions. So a company with an internal labour market that is looking to fill a senior management role, for instance, will look to hire people who have already performed in junior roles within the company. This is in contrast to the external labour market where anyone is free to apply and get chosen for a position.

Source: The Hindu, 8/11/2018

Consent in a man’s world

The routines, stratagems, denials and traps in Indian workplaces still make easy mobility and maintaining dignity difficult even for the most talented young female journalists

“If you want to know more about femininity, enquire from your own experience of life, or turn to people, or wait until science can give you deeper and more coherent information.” Sigmund Freud ends his essay, ‘On Femininity’, with these lines. They are a somewhat testy but frank acknowledgement of the limitations of even his own vast research on the subject. Today, we could do with some of that humility.

In the decades since Freud wrote this, a new world order has risen and mutated. During the 1960s and ’70s, when this writer was living in the US, feminism was all about raising consciousness. That meant various women collectives getting together regularly outside of family circles, and sharing stories about their lives, like members of the Alcoholics Anonymous. At these meetings, after some hesitation, women emerged from being in denial and swapped intimate stories about relationships, work, life goals and sexuality. Tears flowed as they articulated the pain they felt, about the lack of protective nets they needed as young confused girls, the broken trust resulting in deep dilemmas they faced as daughters, wives, mothers. It was through these first-hand narrations that women realised their individual failures were not personal failures but stemmed from their gender being perceived as rooted in sex: Men defined themselves in law and life as aggressive and powerful and women as the receptacles for their sexual urges and producers of their legitimate offspring.

Now, digital media has acquired a life of its own and become a public space that allows various marginalised groups to share their hitherto unpublicised insights about the power structures and hierarchies that exclude them but act as their authorised spokespersons. Of course, riding the great tidal wave of an open-ended show-and-tell has both a good and bad side to it. But it is because of this free space that, for the first time in India, working women are able to tell the world what it has actually been like to be at the receiving end of all those sexist jokes, misogyny, porn and rape or near-rape.

It is entirely understandable that most of the first stories came from the media. Given the sheer mass of women in media today and their rise to positions of power, it makes sense that women reporters feel comfortable enough to blow the whistle, some after more than a decade, and discuss their harassment with clinical precision — with dates, times and places. Their tales are universal and reveal that the real problem is not that Indian men treat women badly (although they often do), but that at the workplace it remains a male prerogative to decide who to treat badly, how and how often, and what should be a suitable “punishment” for those who deny them sexual favours.

The late Justice Leila Seth, who was on the committee that gave us the revised law against sexual harassment and rape, has observed in her book Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern India: “The approach generally taken with gender equality is that women are different from men because they are weaker and more subordinate and consequently need protection… the protectionist approach actually reinforces the difference and perpetuates it.” The tales of sexual harassment — as they unfurl and multiply — prove her words. They reveal how in a work environment dominated by an extremely powerful near-tyrannical boss, the supposed power of a young female trainee to say “no” is actually the obfuscation of her actual lack of power to stop him without losing both her job and her reputation and maybe the possibility of getting another job. The routines, stratagems, denials and traps in Indian workplaces, laid bare by the young women’s testimonies before us, are what still makes easy mobility and maintaining their dignity well-nigh impossible even for the most talented young female journalists.

Men in India, when they challenge a woman’s rape charge in court, will try to feed the still-pervasive belief that women fabricate rape charges after consenting to sex. According to them, women distort the experience. Men seldom consider the reality of sex as anything beyond their own experience of it. But as many stories that have surfaced of late reveal, in the mind of male sexual predators, sex actually represents and enforces the ultimate subordination of women to men. No wonder, then, they claim they thought her resistance or disinclination was a deliberate spur to more ardent love-making.

Surely, in some cases, there may be incentives to lie. But the deeper problem is the frequent legal assumption that a single objective state of affairs existed. And it must be determined by evidence. Lawyers representing the perpetrator thus often go on to divide women into spheres of consent, according to the indices of their relationship to men. From the extent to which the perpetrator knows the victim and they have had sex, her consent is inferred. The inference is: Our client does not rape women he does not know. And if he knows them and has consensual sex with them, how can he be held guilty? Men will mostly define rape in terms, where force and sexual desire are a total package. Here, the law’s problem becomes distinguishing rape from acts misconstrued by the victim as “mere sexual violation” in specific cases. Is it any wonder, then, that most raped women feel that the revised law against rape under such circumstances remains virtually unenforceable as applied to them?

Law is a society’s text, its rational soul. Our courts have recently introduced commendable changes by amending some laws and de-recognising a few colonial ones. Should they now really wish to reflect upon the issue of the sexual exploitation of women, they must acknowledge how much the legitimacy of much of our laws has been derived by force and at women’s expense.

Source: Indian Express, 9/11/2018

Mapping the growth of digital learning in India

In a country as diverse as India, along with overcoming the infrastructure barrier, there needs to be a focus on overcoming the barriers of language and content.

The education divide in India with respect to quality and accessibility has existed for far too long. The Indian education system has remained more or less the same, since last 150 years. It is difficult for the existing physical infrastructure to meet the learning needs of the burgeoning population of our country which will touch 1.5B by 2030 and 1.7B by 2050 (equal to the population of China and USA combined). Digital is gaining acceptance across numerous sectors and it is only right that the education sector too reaps benefits of this digital transformation.

In a country as diverse as India, along with overcoming the infrastructure barrier, there needs to be a focus on overcoming the barriers of language and content. It is impossible to have great teachers in each and every village/district in India. Similarly, the best teachers should not be restricted to certain institutes of the world. This is where e-learning comes in. It can level the playing field for all students. Students, in both rural and urban areas, can get access to the best learning resources, learn at their own pace and in the comfort of their own homes. Another key advantage with e-learning is that it is much easier to design courses with the latest online reference material than publishing crores of books. With the significant rise in internet penetration and the drop in the prices of smartphones in India, access to online learning resources will soon become ubiquitous.

Today, whether it is finding a new word on Google, or watching a photography video, without realising it, we are already using the internet to constantly learn. A major chunk of learning is already happening on the internet, with the government’s push we can expect it to grow to exponential levels.

The launch of the second phase of the Digital India campaign with a renewed focus on education is a welcome step towards the faster development of the education sector. Online education is also receiving its due importance in the New Education Policy drafted by the Kasturirangan Committee. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) under the government’s SWAYAM initiative have the tremendous potential to make higher education accessible to India’s youth, that forms more than 50% of our population.

The government’s push for e-learning reinforces the efforts of online education providers to empower both learners and educators, create more engaging learning experiences and foster personal development. With the push, students will also realise that the accessibility to great teachers can take their learning to the next level.

Going forward, the e-learning space will witness new developments with respect to unconventional methods of learning. Availability of unique courses across categories will encourage students to expand the breadth of the content they consume. Gamification will ensure that the learning process is more interactive and fulfilling. Students will be able to set goals, measure their progress and celebrate their learning achievements. Live online interaction between the students and educators can offer personalised learning that will benefit students in remote areas as well as overcrowded schools. The role of AI and technology in all of this will be huge. AI Bots can act as Study Assistants, that will accompany you along your learning journey. It will know your strengths and weakness inside out and will even recommend what you should read on a given day to maximise your learning outcomes.

The future of e-learning in India is promising. Location, language and financial resources will no longer be a barrier to a great education.

Source: Hindustan Times, 8/11/2018